He seized her face in one hand, much like he’d done earlier that day, when he’d told her that he hated her. He held her in place.
She hit him, beat her fists against his chest, and it was just like earlier, just like when he’d forced himself on her. “If you force me to kiss you now, Iwillkill you. It might not be now, and it might not be anytime soon, but someday, you will let down your guard and you will think that I have forgiven you, because you think I will forgive you anything, and Iwillkill you.”
“Will you?” His face loomed close, his lips inches from her. “How will you do it?” His voice was rough.
She could not catch her breath. “I’ll smother you with a pillow.”
“We’ll be sharing a bed, I suppose?”
“Curse you to the orc underworld itself.”
“Nilhaem,” he supplied. “It’s called Nil—”
And she moved forward and captured his lips with hers, and he let go of her face and enfolded her into an embrace, and his tongue moved slippery against hers, and he still tasted the same, still tasted like he belonged to her, and—
She shoved him.
He staggered backward, colliding with the turret.
For one awful moment, she thought he was going to lose his balance and tip backward, but he clutched at the stone and righted himself.
They just stared at each other for several moments.
He ran a hand through his long black hair. “You’ll kill me or I’ll kill myself, but one way or the other, you are going to be the death of me.” He stalked past her, off the turret, leaving her alone up there.
She touched her lips, shaking her head, scolding herself for her weakness.
Thatman.
9
SHE WAS FOURTEENwhen Dathor returned to Foxglove Peak, when he came back huge and muscled, defiant and sullen, when his uncle told him to sleep in the barn if he would not show respect, when his uncle had him whipped while Dathor gritted his teeth and refused to make noise.
Galadril was gone now, because Celedin went off to school each year, only in the winter and spring, though, for he was obliged to stay home and assist with the harvests in the fall. The steward was obliged to shelter his ward, to feed her, to clothe her, but he had no obligation to educate her. So, there were no tutors anymore.
She tried to keep up with certain aspects of it, to read some books about history and to continue to study the books in the library, but she was not especially good at convincing herself to do tasks when there were no consequences or rewards, and she ended up not doing it as often as she did.
Life at Foxglove Peak was harsh. Celedin was cruel. The steward was unfeeling and sneering. The storms came through in all the seasons, pitiless and violent, winds that tore and ripped, rains that soaked, snow that hit like icy needles.
But there were other aspects, too.
Mornings when she woke and opened the window to look out at the bright sun struggling into the sky, staining the sky shades of crimson and magenta, the beauty of it sointense that it made her throat hurt in the sweetest of ways.
Afternoons where she walked along the paths in the woods and gazed down over the cliffside. She could see the village nearby, nestled in its walls, cozy and gray against the vibrant landscape. In the spring, the colors were bright and new, in the summer, deep green and deep pink, in the fall, angry oranges and reds, in the winter blue and white and silver. All of it that same aching kind of beauty, the kind that reached inside one’s soul and squeezed and shook and scoured.
The sights and sounds and smells of the north were impossible to look away from. They seared themselves against the inside of her body, they wrote themselves into the pulse of each of her heartbeats, they entwined with her guts. The land here, it became a part of her, indelibly.
It was home.
It was a savage sweetness.
She loved this place, in a way, a way that was difficult to explain, but undeniable.
When Dathor first came, it was summer. Celedin had not yet returned from school. She assumed that Dathor would do whatever it was that he must in order to appease his uncle and that he would be back in his little bedchamber at the top of the stairs soon enough.
Of course, she had to admit that his fifteen-year-old orc frame was not going to fit on that bed anymore. He would not be able to sleep there, she supposed.
He would have some other room, though, or a bed in another room, perhaps even just with the servants. He wouldn’t be forced to sleep in the barn forever.
